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Remembered Today:

Dulmen POW Camp


wyndham

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attachment=194426:pow 001 (679x1024) (530x800) (424x640).jpg]

This is the reverse of photo previously sent. Can anyone help me decipher the names?

Ann

There aren't any names except for his - the other bits of writing are instructions for producing a larger colourized print (presumably a close-up of his head and shoulders). At the top it says "Mr. Whitehouse", then below it is a list of the various colours to be used on the print:

"Dark hair

Blue eyes

Fresh comp. (presumably 'complexion')

Dark b....." (not sure about this bit)

Then it indicates where on the photo your man is; "Gent X"

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My grandfather Henry James Darroch nr 49056 6/7th Royal Scots Fusiliers was taken prisoner near the Menin Road on 22 August 1917 and was at POW camp Limburg am Lahn, Parchim and Munster II.

His brother Andrew Darroch nr 331615 (Glasgow) Highland Light Infantry was also taken Prisoner also near the Menin Road on 25 September 1917 and was in Limburg am Lahn, Dulmen and Gurlow.

If you have any information about these camps, please forward them to m.kreijns@casema.nl.

Thank

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my grandfather Private Stephen Bollington (my picture) 1/5th Notts and Derby regiment 200498 was captured at Lens 1 July 1917.

imprisoned at Douai briefly then Dulmen according to his red cross card.

He was captured unwounded but lost an eye as forced labour in a flint mine according to the story his daughter knew. He wore a glass eye the Germans gave him for the rest of his life before passing away in 1972.

I have no other info on him. If his name or story appears in anyone else's memoir or photos I would appreciate hearing from you.

thanks

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  • 3 months later...
Guest djosborn

My grand uncle Herbert Joseph McMahen 3592 of 51st Battalion,13th Brigade, 4th Division, Australian Imperial Force, was taken prisoner at Pozieres in Aug 1916. He spent time at various German POW camps but eventually was moved to Dulmen in about March 1918. Tragically he died there of spanish flu on 2 November 1918. I'm wondering if anyone on this site might have seen his name mentioned in any documents or photos from Dulmen? If not, are there any photos of Australians at Dulmen that anyone is aware of?

Debra

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  • 2 months later...

I posted earlier in this thread that my grandfather Hubert James Baird was a POW in both Limburg-an-der-Lahn and Dulmen. I've been given an envelope (empty) that was sent to him (attached). The envelope is small, 3.25" x 4.25". The various stamps tell a story.

The address may have been written by his father Herbert Theodore Baird. I can read 500020 H. J. Baird, Kriegsgefangenen, ???, via Limburg, Germany. Kriegsgefangenen is of course POW. I'm struggling to read the word above Limburg. Largaritt? Is this the name of a Limburg satellite POW camp?

The postmark bottom right is "Brighton 14 Aug" - it must be 1918. The German postmark top right appears to have the date 11.10.18 and Limburg. At this time he was still a POW in Germany, but at Dulmen, not Limburg. The letter has been returned to the UK, and an "Undeliverable Return to Sender" put on it. Presumably the Royal Mail then opened it in order to find a return address, and resealed it with a label. This reads on the back "Opened by Censor" and on the front P.W.677. The red writing on the left L(?) 639 is under the "Undeliverable" frank and presumably added in Germany. There's also a number 19 in a box over the Limburg frank.

I find if fascinating that this envelope made the journey from Brighton to Limburg and back. Thoughts posters might have would be welcome, particularly on ?Largaritt?

post-48252-0-19299700-1436887770_thumb.j

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It is quite possible that he never was at Limburg. He could have been registered at Limburg as a temporary measure, as many were, without actually going there himself and was instead, sent to Dulmen.

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I posted earlier in this thread that my grandfather Hubert James Baird was a POW in both Limburg-an-der-Lahn and Dulmen. I've been given an envelope (empty) that was sent to him (attached). The envelope is small, 3.25" x 4.25". The various stamps tell a story.

The address may have been written by his father Herbert Theodore Baird. I can read 500020 H. J. Baird, Kriegsgefangenen, ???, via Limburg, Germany. Kriegsgefangenen is of course POW. I'm struggling to read the word above Limburg. Largaritt? Is this the name of a Limburg satellite POW camp?

The postmark bottom right is "Brighton 14 Aug" - it must be 1918. The German postmark top right appears to have the date 11.10.18 and Limburg. At this time he was still a POW in Germany, but at Dulmen, not Limburg. The letter has been returned to the UK, and an "Undeliverable Return to Sender" put on it. Presumably the Royal Mail then opened it in order to find a return address, and resealed it with a label. This reads on the back "Opened by Censor" and on the front P.W.677. The red writing on the left L(?) 639 is under the "Undeliverable" frank and presumably added in Germany. There's also a number 19 in a box over the Limburg frank.

I find if fascinating that this envelope made the journey from Brighton to Limburg and back. Thoughts posters might have would be welcome, particularly on ?Largaritt?

Kriegsgefangenen Lazarett : POW hospital

Bottom stamp is a censor mark of Limburg

The "opened by censor" label seems to have been applied when the letter left England on its way to Germany, because the "Limburg" stamp is applied over it.

That Limburg stamp *could* read "Freigegeben" : "released by the censor", and the purple 19 would then be the censor's number?

Not sure, Limburg POW Camp postal markings are not my forte I have to admit...

Sent from Bristol on 14th August 1918, censored by UK censor (who applied the label), released by the censor at Limburg an der Lahn on 11th October 1918,

and then apparently sent back to sender, but did the Germans use an English-language "Undeliverable" stamp, or was that applied back in England?

Is there anything on the back of the envelope, which is a beauty in its own right actually!

But it throws up quite a few good! questions.

JW

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Thanks for these two replies. Yes I have wondered if perhaps he was at Dulmen throughout as this is the name that has been remembered. Thanks for reading "lazarett", and for noticing that the Limburg frank is over the censor's label, so the censor must be on outward from the UK. I assume the UK frank is Brighton (not Bristol) as his family were in Brighton. I've attached an image of the back of the envelope.

My grandfather hardly spoke of his time as a POW. I understand that there was no organised evacuation of the camp he was in at the end of the war, and that his journey home included a long and cold walk. He didn't have a coat. He came across a dead German soldier at the side of a road and took his coat. I'm told that he was very thin when he arrived back in Britain; also that he had scars on the back of his legs caused by the bayonets of prison guards.

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You said on an earlier post that you had found his ICRC papers. Did it say that he was wounded at capture? I just wondered, as sometimes the RAMC men were put to work in hospitals inside and outside the camps.

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An interesting idea Seaforths.

He was taken prisoner 21st March 1918 at Cerisy, near St Quentin. No, there's no indication on the ICRC papers that he was wounded at capture. The story that has been passed down is that the Germans tunnelled under the British trenches and came up from the rear taking prisoner him and everyone else in the trench - no story of him being wounded. I haven't heard that he was put to work in a hospital, but he said very little about his wartime experiences. For that matter I haven't heard that he was ill while a prisoner. The idea of someone in the RAMC being put to work in a hospital would make sense. It perhaps also explains why a letter (that would have taken weeks to get to its destination) was addressed to a hospital.

About the only other scrap of information that anyone seems to remember about his POW experience is that he was hungry most of the time, and that buckwheat was a major part of the diet. I've eaten buckwheat myself in back-of-beyond Russia (Udmurtia) and wouldn't care to eat much of it, though I gather it is now considered a health food.

Graeme

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Thanks Graeme, I did ask because I've come across RAMC men being put to work in the field too, after capture, in addition to hospitals.

I'm looking at Dulmen quite closely at the moment but have only touched on the tip of the iceberg. I've got to complete other research first. Then I'll get stuck into it properly. I've a personal interest in the place as my granddad was there. At the moment I just have an accumulation of files,statements and information that I've been collecting over time.

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Took a while to find him in the ICRC records, but here he is :

http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/en/File/Details/1290558/3/2/

As for the ss "Takada", this might be of interest:

From the Rotterdam newspaper Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad of 30th November 1918, in the section "Shipping news":

post-107702-0-41606800-1436971474_thumb.

Departed 27th November 1918 [from Rotterdam]

SS Takada Passengers Hull

*edit:

And a picture of the Takada on the Flickr photostream of the Australian National Maritime Museum:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/anmm_thecommons/9567256788#//digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=227094.xml&dvs=1377470824578~570&locale=en_AU&search_terms=&adjacency=&divType=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true

plus one of the Takada in Dazzle livery

http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=227094.xml&dvs=1436994088412~775&locale=en_GB&search_terms=&adjacency=&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/nmets.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=4&divType=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true

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Many thanks JWK. The ICRC records are interesting reading and help piece together a story.

I've attached a photo of Hubert James Baird.

Graeme

post-48252-0-24986100-1436998353_thumb.j

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Some nice digging by JWK.

I can only assume from the information I posted on another thread about camp clearances, that my granddad was among the last to leave Dulmen. I have not, as yet, been able to locate a repat record for him on ICRC. He does appear in the WO Cas.List for 24th December 1918. It took about 2-3 days for that information to appear so possibly arrived about 21st December. After the Armistice, some of the men in the camps just took to the road and tried to make their own way. Others waited, some of those would have been too ill or sick to get themselves out. There were also POW help committees within the camps that tried to facilitate an orderly evacuation. The snippet I posted on camp clearance is here:

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=223705&hl=repatriation

Graeme, your post about the buckwheat in Russia is interesting. The Russians seemed to thrive on the German POW diet. Particularly those of peasant stock, of which there were many. The wheat, watery soups and stews were not so different from the diet they were used to at home. The less inclined the British and other POWs were to touch the stuff, the more there was for the Russians to consume, and they did.

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I'm hazarding a guess that I can't see/view the images because I'm not a member of that forum. Would that be right?

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Yes you would need to join

Roy

Well, I did give it a go this morning but I attempted, it told me; registration is currently disabled.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been passed a newspaper cutting relating to Dulmen camp. It is without date or newspaper name, though presumably a Brighton newspaper December 1918.

‘I only had eight months in the hands of the Germans, but that was quite enough’, Private Hubert James Baird RAMC of 8, Elm Grove told a local reporter. Repatriated on 7 December 1918, the 23-year-old soldier was delighted to be back in Brighton. Educated at Ditchling Road School, he was an old RAMC Territorial. He had gone to France in November 1917 and was in an advanced dressing post near St. Quentin when he was captured on 21 March 1918. He and several others were moved to the rear of the German lines and were made to do dressings and ambulance work for the enemy. With several other RAMC men, he was then moved to Bachant, a major centre for wounded men and prisoners some fifteen kilometres from Mons, and remained there for some weeks until they were sent to Germany. Every day, parties of prisoners returned from work behind the German lines. They were mere bags of bones and all of them were ill. In Germany he was held in Dolman Camp, near the Westphalia Mines. There he was treated well, due to the presence of the British Help Committee Representatives of the British Red Cross. At Dolman there were about 2,000 prisoners captured on all fronts, and they included British, French, Italians, Russians and Portuguese. On 22 November Baird and his fellow-prisoners were released from the camp. He returned to England via Holland, then Hull, where the YMCA gave him and his fellow-POWs as much food as they could carry and showered them with cigarettes and tobacco.

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Thanks for posting that Graham. I was at Kew last week, gathering more evidence on Dulmen. That report kind of conflicts with evidence I was collecting. Hubert's Dulmen sheet is dated by stamp 23/10/18 and handwritten 2/11/18. His lack of date for arrival at Dulmen in the article is a bit frustrating. However, it seems that he might have been working in France/Belgium longer that the article indicates. He has a registration with Limburg prior to Dulmen. He makes no mention of Limburg. Therefore, it must be accepted that he was probably never at Limburg. Also, his Dulmen sheet does not reflect he was registered at Dulmen previously. His repat shows he arrived Hull 29th November 1918.

I get the feeling he wasn't at Dulmen for very long. The Germans, a few weeks before the Armistice, had a sudden rush to get as many POWs as they could out of France and Belgium and into Germany. It is possible he could have been caught up in this.

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have you tried the records of Red Cross for his registration??

he also could have been sent to a work camp as my wife;s great uncle was at Dulmen and then sent further inland Germany to a work camp building bridges, from there he escaped to Holland

regards

Bob R.

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Not sure which Red Cross records you mean Bob but the sheets I was referring to for Limburg, Dulmen and Repat were his ICRC (International Comittee of the Red Cross) sheets. Usually, if a man was transferred from one camp to another, the last sheet he has, in this case his Dulmen sheet, would reflect the name of his previous camp which would be Limburg. This is not the case here and indicates that, despite him being registered at Limburg, in reality, he was never physically there.

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